The new mutant variant of ‘super’ coronavirus is indeed more contagious than previous variants, just as scientists feared, a new study has found.
Researchers at Imperial College London have found that the new variant, which has wreaked havoc in the UK, could be nearly 50 percent more transmissible, based on samples taken from nearly 86,000 Britons.
In the study published online yesterday, which has yet to be judged by peers, researchers from Imperial College found that the ‘R’ number for the new B117 variant is between 0.4 and 0.7 points higher as other variants.
The ‘R’ number of a virus describes the average number of additional cases that each infection leads to.
In the UK, the latest R-number is between 1.1 and 1.3, government figures show. This means that every ten infected people will infect between 11 and 13 other people on average.
Graphs from the new study show how the new variant became more common during eight weeks (dots higher on each map) in the UK and became more transferable (dots to the right of each graph show rising R-numbers, or transmission speeds
Pictured: a screenshot from the Imperial College report showing case trends regarding the new coronavirus strain, where the% S rate indicates the transport of the new variant
Pictured: graphs from the Imperial College report showing the age distribution of people wearing the new variant of Covid-19
Meanwhile, each infected person in the U.S. on average leads to 1.15 more infections, according to daily calculations by RT.live.
According to this degree of portability, the R-number in the US ranges from about 0.86 in Alaska to 1.23 in Maine, which appeared as a hotspot this week.
The new variant was first detected in the UK in September, according to the study, but in early December it exploded, causing an increase in infections among Britons.
The spread of the new novel SARS-CoV-2 variant, or Variant of Concern 202012/01 (VOC), occurs in England despite the fact that a tiger system exists as part of efforts to spread the virus among to bring control.
Most of England is below ‘Tier 4’, the most severe level, but still sees the daily infections of Covid-19, despite the measures.
Imperial College London researchers sequentially made the genomes of 1,904 people infected with the new variant and compared how quickly the virus spread with a broader sample of other samples taken from more than 48,000 people in England.
As they expected, they found the new virus a ‘selective advantage over the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants in England’, they wrote in the press on Thursday.
The variant was also disproportionately common among people in their twenties and those living in south-east and east England and London.
The findings of the new study mean that each person caught with this mutated virus will pass it on to up to 0.7 more people on average.
So far, there is no evidence to suggest that the new variant causes serious diseases or is more deadly.
It is encouraging that virologists and public health experts believe that vaccines manufactured by companies such as AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna will continue to be effective against the new variant of the coronavirus.
But the new variant increases the race between the spread of the virus and vaccination campaigns in the UK, US – where the new variant has now been found in Colorado, California and Florida – and at least 31 other countries where the more contagious form of coronavirus was detected.
With more than 186,000 people infected on average in just one day in the US, the transmission rate of 1.85% of 1.85 new infections per day can exceed more than 275,000.
It can cause disasters for hospitals in hotspots like California, where some health care systems and regions are already outside ICU beds, in states of ‘internal disaster’ and rationing care.
There are similar fears in the UK about the National Health Service (NHS) and the ability to cope with the number of coronavirus patients as the new variant of the disease continues to spread.
The information was shared from a separate study conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Deepti Gurdasani – a senior lecturer at the Queen Mary University of London in epidemiology and statistical genetics – warned that ‘B117 in most regions’ is dominant or’ very strong ‘in most regions’ in England.
Over the course of six weeks, the researchers saw how the transmission rate (R) of the new coronavirus variant became higher (orange) than that of other variants, especially in South East England, East England and London.
Meanwhile, only 3.17 million Americans have been vaccinated since Friday, according to a Bloomberg News version.
The CDC’s score places the number even lower. The agency’s website says the vaccination detection will be updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but at the time of publication, the instrument showed Wednesday’s numbers, with 2.79 million people vaccinated.
According to Bloomberg’s higher estimate, by the end of the year, Operation Warp Speed had vaccinated only 16 percent of the 20 million Americans he had promised to vaccinate.
At this rate, it will take nearly a decade to vaccinate all adult members of America’s population of 331 million people.
And many Americans stay on the fence to get a vaccine, even if it’s available. About 60 percent of nursing home workers in Ohio said they would refuse a shot.
Sluggish, dysfunctional vaccine distribution and Americans’ mistrust of the shots can collectively provide the B117 variant with just the opening it needs to spread like wildfire across the country, infecting millions of people with the 20 million people already had the infection in the US and killed. thousands.
